At shopping-centre T-shirt printing kiosks, Warwick Levy turned the exuberant internet slang of the mid-2000s into something he could wear. “It was a way to break through my social anxiety that I had, where I felt a bit awkward around other people – like a starting point to show a little bit about who I was and my identity,” Levy told Inside Retail. 

Back home, he concocted imaginary clothing ranges on the family computer using Microsoft Paint, eventually launching his brand Lonely Kids Club in 2011. Today, the independent Sydney label’s designs come from Levy, in-house artists and external collaborators. Levy explained that the team never follows trends and just does what they’re excited about. “Part of that for me is this idea of trying to run my own race,” he explained. “I would never want to release something that looks like it could be someone else’s work.”  

Each garment is printed and made-to-order, keeping finished stock to a minimum and diminishing the familiar retail pressure for clearance sales. Clothing stewardship scheme Seamless estimates that 47 million imported garments went unsold in Australia in 2024, while 220,000 tonnes of clothing went to landfill.

But that carefully managed operation faced a problem Levy had not anticipated. He learnt the label’s designs were selling on Temu when a collaborating artist asked why their work was available there at half the price. The artist wanted an explanation, and in tandem, Levy needed one himself.

“I didn’t really know how I was meant to handle it because there isn’t really a direct way to talk to anyone there [at Temu],” he told Inside Retail .

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